‘I’m not going to chase youth!’ Pamela Anderson reveals her big Hollywood regret
As she is the toast of Hollywood red carpets this awards season, Pamela Anderson tells why she is not letting outdated beauty standards define her.
Stellar
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Hollywood loves a second chance, and Pamela Anderson is finally getting hers.
For years, the now 57-year-old was widely defined by her star-making role on Baywatch, her Playboy pin-up persona, and a tempestuous mid-’90s marriage to Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.
“I felt very flattered to be part of pop culture and to be in the red bathing suit [on Baywatch], but that was also confining,” Anderson tells Stellar. Buoyed by rave reviews for her 2022 stint in the Broadway musical Chicago, she is now relishing in the acclaim for her leading performance in director Gia Coppola’s new movie The Last Showgirl.
Anderson says the chance to play Shelly, the lead performer in a Vegas show about to be shut down after three decades on the Strip, “feels like the beginning of my career. I mean, she’s vulnerable, she’s smart, she’s intelligent, she’s full of nostalgia”.
“She loves the history of what she’s doing. She’s very attached to her art form, and takes it very seriously. All those things really appealed to me.”
For Anderson, whose biggest lead movie role to date was 1996’s much-maligned Barb Wire, The Last Showgirl does indeed signal a screen rebirth.
Later this year, she’ll be seen opposite Liam Neeson for a reboot of classic film comedy series The Naked Gun, and she just shot Rosebush Pruning, alongside Elle Fanning and Jamie Bell, in Barcelona.
Much of Anderson 2.0 comes down to the pop-culture icon taking control of her own narrative. A year after 2022’s miniseries Pam & Tommy – which Anderson vocally disavowed – she released an autobiography and documentary, the latter of which convinced Showgirl director Gia Coppola to approach her.
“In the documentary, I could just see that there were so many things – what she likes, I like,” Coppola tells Stellar.
“I felt like I really wanted to collaborate with her. She is a hungry artist. She wants to express herself dramatically, and she is a wealth of all of these independent movies and theatre and philosophy that I am inspired by.”
Coppola cites another blonde bombshell who was never given due credit for her acting skills, calling the star “our modern Marilyn”.
In fact, Anderson points out, “I regret that I didn’t stay in acting classes throughout my life, and just focus on that.
“[I] just went by with survival at some points, keeping the lights on – whatever I had to do to make it work after certain things happened in my career.”
Anderson, who now lives on a farm in Canada’s Vancouver Island, has made headlines in recent years – many of them positive – for opting to go without make-up when she shows up to red carpets and publicity events.
She shrugs off the praise. “I don’t feel like I look any better without make-up. I just look more me,” she reasons.
“I never did it for the attention. I did it for myself. But it has resonated with many women.
“I just wanted to get off the crazy train, and thought, ‘I am at this age, and that’s OK. That’s great.’ I’m not going to chase youth. You’re not going to win.”
The Last Showgirl is in cinemas from Thursday. For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.
Read the full interview with Pamela Anderson in Stellar, out today inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).
Originally published as ‘I’m not going to chase youth!’ Pamela Anderson reveals her big Hollywood regret
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